


Not Like Most

by Arsenic and (Oleander)



Series: What He Wants [3]
Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: AU, Alpha Sherlock, Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, Bonding, Ficlet, Gen, M/M, Mentions of past abuse, Omega John, Pre-Slash, Teenlock
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-20
Updated: 2014-01-20
Packaged: 2018-01-09 11:09:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 765
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1145265
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Oleander/pseuds/Arsenic%20and
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Challenges in communication in the progress of Sherlock and John's courtship.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Not Like Most

**Author's Note:**

> This piece is set at least a few weeks after What He Wants and Like A Handshake. 
> 
> **Please note** that I have changed my mind about the character's ages, which had previously only been stated in an Author's Note, and not the actual text of the story.

“Thank you for dinner,” John says, like he does every night. “May I please be excused?”  
Sherlock sneers as Mycroft nods, and then John slips off to his room, where he will, as he always does, lock the door.

“ _Sherlock_ ,” Mycroft says. It’s all the warning he needs and Sherlock slumps back in his chair. Mycroft raises an eyebrow, but Sherlock doesn’t move again.

“How am supposed to court him if he won’t spend any time with me?”

“He does spend time with you. You eat all of your meals together, and you advise him on his scientific studies.”

Sherlock can only glare. “Boring. I haven’t eaten so much in ages. I’ll be as fat as you in a month and then he’ll never look twice at me.”

“Mummy was very pleased to hear that you had taken up regular meals again.”

“Ugh.” Mycroft is leaning back now, examining him.

“Do you really find it so surprising that he avoids you when every outing you have suggested provides you with another opportunity to drug him? In any case, picnics and museum outings are not precisely to your taste at all.”

“Omegas are supposed to like that kind of thing.” Sherlock hates that eyebrow. Mycroft is only twenty-one, just seven years older, and yet he has mastered the disapproving looks at which Mummy and Daddy excel and uses them mercilessly. It makes him feel childish.

“If you have to subject yourself to tedium to make him happy, perhaps he isn’t the Omega for you after all, Sherlock.”

“No!” Sherlock pushes his chair back so fast that it topples over, but he doesn’t care. “ _I_ found him. He’s _mine_ ,” he hisses angrily. Stupid, _stupid_ Mycroft. Still sitting so casually, like he’s bored. Like Sherlock’s Omega doesn’t _matter_.

“Consider, Sherlock,” Mycroft says. “If he _is_ the one for you, he ought to see you…honestly. He’s interested in medicine. Why wouldn’t he find your experiments intriguing? Or your maps of London, and your plans for a network of informants. While you’re at it, you might try to get his surname out of him. I’m looking forward to making an example of that man.”

Perhaps Mycroft isn’t so purely horrible after all. John did like stitching up Billy’s gang, and one of them had had a cut that oozed and bled worse than any death-wound Sherlock had ever seen. It was a good idea. And yet… “Why should I get you that name? You’d make John see him again at the trial, and he doesn’t want to. If I keep John in our circles, he’ll never have to see his father again. He’ll be safe.”

“He’ll be trapped,” Mycroft counters. “He won’t like that.”

“Maybe I’ll ask him what he wants, then,” Sherlock says defiantly.

“You’re both right,” John’s voice comes from the door behind Sherlock. “I don’t—I don’t want to see him. But I can’t stay here forever. I’m no kind of Omega for you if I’m too scared to go outside. You’d get bored with me even quicker with me always hiding.”

_John_. “You’re not boring,” Sherlock says, turning his back on Mycroft to go to John. “You’re _not_.”

“But I will be,” John says sadly. “You never really want to do the things you ask me to do with you. You scrunch up your nose when you don’t like something.”

Out of the corner of his eye, Sherlock observes Mycroft rising to leave, sees the flab of his belly move under his shirtwaist, and without thinking, he makes a face, nose wrinkling.

“There. You just did it now.”

No. Oh no, now John will think Sherlock doesn’t like _him_! “Because of Mycroft!” he blurts. “Because he’s fat and interfering and he let me keep saying things you wouldn’t like when he knew you were there!”

“Oh.” 

John’s brow is furrowed, considering. “But he was right,” John pointed out eventually. “You don’t like picnics and museums unless there’s something interesting going on at the same time. And I don’t either.”

A long pause, and then, “I liked it, you know, when you said you would just ask me. Most Alphas don’t ever ask their Omegas anything except what’s for supper.”

“I’m not most Alphas.”

“I know. Most Alphas don’t pick Omegas from street gangs either.”

“You weren’t _in_ the gang, you were—” Sherlock realizes that John is teasing just a moment late and flushes. “—special,” he finishes. “Would you—I mean, you would—that is, _what_ would you like to do? With me? Tomorrow? I could show you—”

“Could I go with you to the mortuary?”

**Author's Note:**

> Constructive feedback always welcome.


End file.
